Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Literature Review # 4

Paul Mihailidis



Mihailidis, Paul. "The Civic-social Media Disconnect: Exploring Perceptions of Social Media for Engagement in the Daily Life of College Students." Taylor & Francis Online, n.d. Web. 08 

Summary: This article examines social networking and how it manipulates engagement and behavior within young people who are the most susceptible to this technology. Through his analysis and survey he draws conclusions about how social media affects their lives in society and on a personal level. Although students are using the internet for different outlets such as sports and news, they are generally using it for entertainment and socialization. 

Paul Mihalidis is a professor at Emerson College who focuses his work on engagement in civic life and how media affects young people. He is also the director at Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change, and has published numerous articles on his subjects of interest that include digital media engagement and how it is shaping the lives of young people.


Quotes:"Perceptions can help embrace the complex ecosystem for engagement that incorporate new media but also allow for cultural, social, political, and commercial attitudes to be included in new understandings of engagement in contemporary society. As the results of this study show, students' limited perceptions and negative attitudes toward the efficacy of social networks for daily civic life challenges assumptions of new media as a transformational tool for civic engagement, specifically in the context of young people's information and communication habits in daily life."

"The first research question asked about college students' use of social media for daily information and communication needs, and was explored using a survey instrument that assessed social media use across six categories: news, politics, relationships, privacy, leisure, and education. The survey results, not surprisingly, show a clear migration of information consumption and communication behaviors to social networks."


"Not surprisingly, social networks are the central facilitators for daily communication with peers, family, and acquaintances. When asked about the effect of social media on friendships, 39% of the sample reported feeling closer to their friends because of social media, while 26% of the sample felt that they had ‘more friends’ because of social media. Less than 3% saw social media as taking away from time with friends or making friends"


Key Term: social networks, communication, students, college, communication, 
engagement, disconnect, citizens, peers, information, socialization

Value: This article was an important read because through his surveys, the reader better understands what young people are doing with their tools and how in result is making them feel. It focuses on attitudes and feelings while incorporating aspects of statistical information. By understanding how students are utilizing their tools, we are able to understand the efficiency of these same tools. 


Monday, October 27, 2014

Literature Review #1

Amy Novotney


Novotoney, Amy. "Facing up to Debt. "http://www.apa.org. 2014 American Psychological Association, n.d. Web. 26 Sept 2014 <http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2013/01/debt.aspx>.

Summary: In this article, the author begins to create comparisons between the pressures of debt and the effects it creates in a student's life. She underlines the statistics while incorporating conclusions that explain how money can consume a young adults life into anxiety and additional stress. She also researches how these same students deal with the stress and how different people react. She later gives statements from professionals about how young people can go about with tackling their stress and debt.

"The social stigma and psychological effects are reduced because people have more support from friends who are in the same scenario."

"While debt is increasingly common, many grads students feel isolated by the shame of being in the red, and that.."

"Nearly 64 percent of psychology graduate students report that concern over finances and debt..."

Novotoney is a Chicago freelancer that focuses on psychology. She has numerous articles that convey interesting and relevant topics in psychology.

Key Terms: debt, psychology, stress, money anxiety, debt, students, finances,

This article is valuable because it features many interviews that question students and professionals dealing with the student debt crisis. This allows the viewer to get an intimate understanding of the issue that statistics can't necessarily provide. It presents the material in an understanding and relatable material where I was able to draw conclusions by combining statistics and real life experiences into new revelations.

Literature Review # 3

Andrew Lepp



Citation: Lepp Andrew, The Relationship between Cellphone Use, Academic Performance, Anxeity and Satisfaction with Life in College Students.N.p. 23 Nov. 2013. Web. 20. Oct. 2014 <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pil/S0747563213003993>.

Summary: This article examines the rapidly growing behavior traits in students and how their interactions with technology affect their over all health and psyche. It looks into the relationship between students and their cellphones that lead to an array of conclusions about increased anxiety rates and their affects on the academic life of a student on a college level. After the examination, it was proven that texting greatly affected students' health, happiness, well-being and academic performance.

Andrew Lepp is a professor at Kent State University concentrating in tourism, leisure, and physical activity. He has published numerous articles on these subjects along with college student satisfaction and the technology effects of computerization.

Key Terms: cell phones, texting, computers, anxiety, negative, behavior, college, technology, students,

Quotes:
"In other words, high cellphones users were less physically fit than low cell phone users" Page 343

"Although these studies utilized...academic performance was consistently and negatively associate with CPUse (calling and texting.) Page 344

"Video games has been associated with lower GPAs." Page 344

This article was a valuable resource for my project because the author thoroughly underlined the statistics behind his conclusions. Through his analysis, he was able to examine the numbers and base valuable conclusions. It also allowed me as a viewer to create conclusions myself and further develop my ideas.


Literaure Review #2

How Computers Change the Way We Think
By Sherry Turkle

Turkle, Sherry. "How Computers Change the Way We Think." Chronicle of Higher Education 50.21 (2004): B26-28. Web.

Sherry's article goes into depth about the effects of how computer use is shaping the lives of young people focusing on their ability to learn and grow in personal and intellectual areas of their lives. She analyzes the computer and how these machines have emotional and cognitive effects on young people who have grown up during a controversial time period. She mentions the effects of software that translate into computer simulations that manipulate the relationships people have with technology along with their process of learning. Aside from the relationship a person builds with technology, she begins to look at the bigger picture and examine the contrasts of experiences between people who are in tune with reality and those who are not. Education and structure is alos introduced as she tells about the way computers have left people living in a transparent world filled with distractions and discontent. 

Sherry Turkle is a Professor of Social Studies at Massachusetts Insitute of Technology where she focuses her efforts on psychoanalysis of the human interaction between machines. She researches and studies this psychological relationship and writes about how these machines have become a big part of a human's life on a multitude of levels. Her research explains how technology has affected the way people think and feel and the issues that arise. She has published numerous books that discuss these modern day challenges. 


Key terms: technology, psychology, relationships, emotions, cognitive, process, computers, authentic selves

"Today's college students are habituated to a world of online blogging, instant messaging, and Web browsing that leaves electronic trace...." Page 2

"But some people who gain fluency in expressing...harder to develop authentic selves" Page 2

"In that aesthetic, presentation becomes its own powerful idea." Page 2

This article was valuable because it allowed me to understand how computers affect children at the young age of when they are first using computers. She puts into perspective a unique point of view about how children's  and habits lead them a stray of understanding who they truly are. 

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Research Blog #5

Bibliography:

Lepp, Andrew. The Relationship between Cell Phone Use, Academic Performance, Anxiety, and Satisfaction with Life in College Students. N.p., 23 Nov. 2013. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563213003993>.

Mihailidis, Paul. "The Civic-social Media Disconnect: Exploring Perceptions of Social Media for Engagement in the Daily Life of College Students." Taylor & Francis Online, n.d. Web. 08 Jan. 2014. <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2013.877054#.VEanVOe6DRw>.

Turkle, Sherry. "Authenticity in the Age of Digital Companions." Interaction Studies (2007): 501-17. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Web.

Turkle, Sherry. "How Computers Change the Way We Think." Chronicle of Higher Education 50.21 (2004): B26-28. Web.

Sherry, Turkle. "The Networked Primate." Scientific American (2014): 82-85. CINAHL. Web.

Turkle, Sherry. "Seeing Through Computer." American Prospect (1997): 76-82. Web. <http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/pdfsforstwebpage/ST_Seeing%20thru%20computers.pdf>.

Research Blog #4 The Effects of the Technological Demands on Students

Technology serves many purposes in the classroom environment especially during a prospering age when modern society creates great demands on such tools for communication and development. Although the advantage points are high and they serve many purposes for the structure of education and communication, technology has taken another tole on young people’s lives including students whom have utilized this advancement beyond its means into a territory of self-defeat. Technology has created a shift in the mental structure of students who grew up during this craze and through this shift, different aspects of their lives are affected. The culture of simulation has manifested into a multitude of directions in modern students’ life that affect both their personal and academic experiences. Some of these effects develop into illusions that create a confusion in the authentication of personal relationships, a dependency for technological interaction to suffice for their intellectual and emotional needs, and a disengagement and declination in their learning. However, students have no choice but subdue to the system in order to meet a growing job market. Due to the prospering job market that demands technologically advanced students, schools are compensating by creating curriculums that promote the use of computers. In other words, students need to become absorbed in technology in order to survive during a struggling economy and in doing so lose on other aspects of their lives that may be the result of a consumerist cycle that creates high demands for new technology.

The relevancy of the technological job market that ultimately feeds off the growing generation that is co-dependent on these tools intertwines with the privatization of academia that is nurturing these demands by creating curriculums that require extensive training in computers. Because of the privatization of education, schools need to stay relevant and up to date in order to keep up in a competitive market. In doing so, they create curriculums that promote majors with a high job availability. With the recent technological craze and dependency for these tools, the market for technology is expanding resulting in the increase of jobs that require students who have received the proper education. On the other hand, technology companies depend on these hungry young people who depend on their computers for their every need while creating a relationship with the schools to suffice for these needs. However, in the long run this cycle leads to a world of self-defeat and absorption creating a world where people simply cannot escape. Their computers no longer become tools, but “interactive objects” that “”spoke” to its user, pointed toward new kinds of experiences in which people did not so much command machines as to enter into conversations with them” as Turkle explains in Seeing through computers:education in a culture of simulation. The relationship between the user and the computer begins to evolve into a personal connection where a relationship or attachment begins to develop. Through this attachment, people are finding it harder to step away from their computers and face reality. In doing so, the idea of authentic relationships begins to play as a factor in the development in the psyche of how healthy interactions should be perceived. However, through the development of technology, people are finding it irrelevant to create personal relationships with people because their needs are being compensated digitally. In the article Authenticity in the age of digital companions, Turkle describes says “Human beings evolved in an environment that did not require them to distinguish between authentic and simulated relationships. Only since the advent of computers have people needed to develop criteria for what we consider to be “authentic” relationships, and for many people the very idea of developing these criteria does not seem essential.” Students grow manipulated attachments for the narratives they create landing them into a land of fairytale expectations as Turkle describes in How computers Change the way we think, “But some people who gain fluency in expressing multiple aspects of self may find it harder to develop authentic selves. Some children who write narratives for their screen avatars may grow up with too little experience of how to share their real feelings with other people. For those who are lonely yet afraid of intimacy, information technology has made it possible to have the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship”.

The fairytale land of technology can land students into serious trouble as they sit in the class scrolling through their news feed as a means to suppress any discomforts of boredom, however as they are doing so, their brain is being manipulated in a negative manner that affects their over all learning experience. In the book Information, Communication & Society, Paul Mihailidis mentions that “these tools predominately facilitate peer-to-peer communication, sharing and interactivity, they are disrupting traditional top-down information flow, at the same time integrating many different types of forms of content. With all of this information streaming into single feeds and aggregated space, seeing the diverse content that streams through these spaces can be difficult. This was reflected in the participants reluctance to acknowledge or advocate for positive or valuable uses of social media in general. This also poses a threat to recognizing accurate, balanced, and credible sources of information in peer-to-peer networks.” In result, the notion that an abundance of information is beneficial the mind is contradictory when examining the learning process of a student. Through the over exposure of different sources, students are finding it more difficult to distinguish what is true and what is false thus creating false information. Not only is technology disrupting the flow of information, it is also taking away from the process of learning. “Furthermore, technology use and technology studies by Juno (2012a,b) have examined the relationship Facebook use, time spent studying, and overall GPA. Results indicated that time spent on Facebook was strongly and negatively related to overall GPA while only weakly related to time spent studying.” (343, Lepp) Students are investing their time that they should be saving for education towards useless outlets that work as a self-defeating mechanism. Instead of preparing and planning their time for practical and beneficial activities, with tools that “were born as ‘social amplifiers, without any real context for concrete civic uses.” (344, Lepp) and eventually “If young people continue to see them as superficial social outlets then their ability to be used for diverse and inclusive means will be limited.” In this instance, technology no longer serves as a tool, however a mechanism that drives humans beings towards self-defeat in a space that promotes academia. Through these distractions, students lose context of information that results in a decreased desire to learn while depending on computers to do the work.

Alongside the emotional and intellectual struggles that students begin to face as the demand for technology increases, the over all mental and physical health begins to play as a factor. According to Andrew Lepp’s study called Relationship between cellphone use, academic performance, anxiety and satisfaction with Life in college students, “Rosen Carrier et al (2013), and Rosen, Whaling, Rab, Carrier an Cheever (2013) investigated anxiety related to technology use among a large sample of teens, young adults and adults. Their results show that not being able to connect with technology, particularly Facebook, text messages, and cell phone calls, as frequently as desired was associated with feelings of anxiety.” This also played in with the fact that “high cell phone users were less physically fit than low cell phone users. Interview data collected as part of the study explained the negative relationship by suggesting that CPUse disrupts physical activity behavior, causing high frequency users to be less physically active and more sedentary in comparison to low frequency users.” Concluding that the demand for technology to reconcile the emotional and intellectual needs of people is sacrificed for their over mental and physical health. With the rising addiction and need for computer use, when disabled, people begin to feel anxious and uncomfortable that may lead to other poor habits and health effects. Along with the frequent use of computers and lack of real life interaction, people spend most of their time in one spot for long periods of time leaving no time for exercise or physical movement, an essential for the health of a person.

In conclusion, people are sacrificing their essential needs for personal and physical interaction and the privilege to learn for the confinement and addiction for technological use. This creates a cycle that effects the privatization of education where the demands for technology continue to rise, not only in the private lives of people but their academics. This cycle is intended to supply the people that feed it creating a consumerist market that invests in technological company for all their needs. In result, creating a job market that is sufficed by institutions to provide educated students who know how to use computers. From this, the demand to use technology grows more in the classroom adding to the bombardment of simulation in a person’s life. Through this abundance, other aspects of that person’s life are neglected such as the need for personal interactions, intellectual growth and mental and physical well-being.


Research Blog #3 Privitization and the Technology Market

The privatization of education has created a unique dynamic in the structure of curriculum and concentrations of education. Because institutions are looking for new ways to prosper, they are left to do so by accommodating the market of consumerism. Consumerism affects the structure and curriculum of academia because universities are more likely to offer programs that are practical and demanding in order to attract students and revenue. A demanding market that has become a large part of society and how it is ran is technology. It is in every nook and cranny, from the way we prepare food to how we save our money. Society is structured and cultivated around technology and computers. They form the basis to all of our systems of development and communication. In result, institutions are compensating for these technological demands with a curriculum that subdues to their needs. In doing so, students are bombarded with the need to advance in computer technology in order to survive in the available job market. How could you imagine anybody finding a job in modern day society without knowing how to use a computer? We can recollect back to 20 years ago when computers were first beginning to come onto the consumerist market. At this point, our parents and grandparents were still getting by not knowing how to properly use a computer. However today, an employer does not want to pay you any interest if you cannot function a computer. At one point, making a living was possible without the knowledge of operating a computer, however today, it is nearly impossible to find a job that doesn’t require you to understand the basic fundamentals of a computer for serious money. This is an interesting idea, because now that institutions are in the open business market, they are forced to figure out ways to keep up to date. Students are now required to utilize computers and technology in every aspect of their lives from when they set their alarm clock to when they enter their office. This may sound ideal, but how does all this pressure affect a young persons’ life? When can do they have time to turn off  the technology or is it even possible?